It appears that the Pixel C was planned as launch hardware for a new, all-touch version of Chrome OS which at some point got canceled—necessitating a switch to Android. The story is a lot more complicated than that, though. What follows is the best timeline we could piece together showing the Pixel C’s troubled development history.

The Pixel C’s early reviews have been kind of rough, primarily due to the software being the phone-sized apps blown up to a tablet screen. Based on the hardware (especially that keyboard layout), this theory makes sense and is really a shame that Google didn’t allow the Pixel C to be a Surface-y Chromebook.

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